Hegewisch Branch hosts a Polish American Heritage Month art exhibit during the month of October featuring artist Robin Dluzen.
Dluzen is a Chicago-based artist of Polish descent. Dluzen has a bachelor's degree in fine arts and literature from Adrian College as well as a master's degree in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently Dluzen maintains a studio practice and regularly contributes to variety of art-related journals.
Artist Statement
Though the imagery I feature in my work may seem varied—the transmission towers, the topographical maps and the appropriated line drawings—together they create a composite picture of the concept of “home.” While some evoke very personal notions of home for myself, like the absent-minded doodles my father made as he related a story about working in an iron foundry as a young man, others encompass a wider scope via the landscape site plans from my mother’s workplace, very near to the place I was born in southeast Michigan. Still others, like the power lines and appropriated hardware illustrations, will be familiar to a broad spectrum of viewers. Compounded with the content imparted through the representational imagery is the meaning imbued within the sourced, recycled, utilitarian and throwaway materials I employ. Ephemeral media like brown paper lawn refuse bags and cardboard contribute to a “here today, gone tomorrow,” fleeting sense of place and time. But, home is not just a place of fondness and memories; it’s also the conflation of landscape, labor and socioeconomics that lay the groundwork of identity.
